Friday, 26 June 2009

What a bizarre juxtaposition. On the same day, a moderately successful actress passes on after a very private fight is carried out very much in the public eye. Meanwhile, an incredibly successful, though why is a complete mystery to me, pop singer's life turns into a freak show that simply ends as if cut off by a large, curved agricultural implement.

It looks as though Mr Barack Hussein Obama's attempt to subvert the already tarnished integrity of ABC News by turning it into an arm of Minitru didn't come off quite as planned. Not only did the Chavezesque show deliver less than sterling ratings (against a load of comedy repeats no less), but there were other problems as well.

When The One wasn't making prescriptions for how to handle elderly patients (Expensive operations? Just take some painkillers.), he let this brick drop when a neurologist broke through the cordon and asked Mr Obama if he'd pledge that he and his family would live under the same public health care restrictions as the peasantry. Quote the messiah,

(If) it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

Whatever else, Mr Obama has job security. With that kind of hypocrisy, he can always get a cabinet post under New Labour.

According to the BBC, wallabies getting stoned on poppies and making crop circles.

This is more of a breakthrough than you might think. We not only have opium poppies growing wild in Britain, owing to some local councils who didn't read the seed packets properly, but there are also wallabies living on the Yorkshire Moors. They're good fun. You can always tell a dog who'd come across one because even very large bunnies tend not to punch one in the nose and it's always worth a laugh down the pub to look mystified while some rambler from down south tries to reveal that he thought he saw a kangaroo that afternoon.

Then we find out they're responsible for all that mashed-down corn as well. Now all we need to do is find out if wallabies were around during the Bronze Age and we'll have Stonehenge sorted out as well.

Thursday, 25 June 2009

This is a rather neat idea if you're putting on a production of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or an adaptation of the Circus of Dr Lao, but you'd think that the chaps at Popular Science and elsewhere on the Internet would keep their mythological creatures straight. This is a fawn faun, I say again, a fawn faun, not a centaur.

Figuring that being a brutal dictatorship that indulges in little things like assassination, harbouring and aiding terrorists, stockpiling chemical weapons, and carrying on an illegal nuclear programme isn't all that serious, The One is sending an ambassador to Syria.

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

An oxygen-free wine globe that holds the equivalent of 70 bottle of cheap chardy is all well and good, but it looks a bit heavy to keep on the desk and walking any distance ruins the point of the thing, so I think I'll pass.

Monday, 22 June 2009

The mullahs of Iran are singling out Britain as the agent working against them in the current election turmoil.

And, you know, I hope they're right.

Instead of The One's revolting pussyfooting in a singlular attempt to fawn over whoever comes out on top of this power struggle, we should nail our colours to the mast and declare that we stand four square for democracy for the Iranians, point out that the Coalition has over 200,000 men on Iran's doorsteps, and to Hell with whomever says nay.

It's six months into the presidency of Mr Barack Hussein Obama and, uniquely for a US president, I still haven't figured out what he is. Oh, granted he's a Democrat and by his own, very thin, resume he's the most left-wing man ever to have ascended to the oval office, but being a leftist covers a lot of ground from mild American-style liberalism to raving Maoism. The question with Mr Obama is, where does he fall within this spectrum. Amazingly, after four years in the public eye, I find one of four alternatives:

An idealogue who finds America in its present form unworthy of survival, who intends to rip it to shreds and rebuild it in his own image much as Tony Blair tried to do with Britain's institutions.

A dedicated socialist who has a Utopian programme that he believes will usher in the new secularist millennium and for which all else is a distraction.

A 21st century Mussolini who is a pragmatist at heart and will form a Third Way because the only criteria for success is not failing.

An Alinskyite postmodernist whose sole objective is to acquire power for its own sake.

However different all these are, I believe that Mr Obama does have an agenda and a political philosophy. The trouble is, what he actually believes and desires is obscured by the following:

Despite his reputation for being "cool", Mr Obama is actually a very timid man who is easily swayed by others and events–so much so that it's often hard to tell when he is acting of his own volition, caving to intimidation, or just not interested enough to do more than vote "present". This is the reason he's often so thuggish when crossed. Ending an objection with "I won" or making veiled threats about mobs and pitchforks is hardly the strategy of a confident man.

He's a supreme narcissist. True, so was Mr Bill Clinton, but at least the latter's ego manifested itself in his desire to turn his tenure into an eight-year frat house party. With Obama we have a man who doesn't regard his presidency as a chapter in American history, but as another installment in the personal saga of Barack Hussein Obama. Worse, as seen in his Cairo speech, he talks as if the presidency is beneath him and that he'd rather be seen as, to give him the benefit of the doubt, a king who will be remembered as the wise ruler who made the lion lie down with the lamb while showering his adoring subjects with largesse.

Contrary to boilerplate descriptions, he is not a very intelligent man nor is he very articulate without a teleprompter. It's easy to seem smart if you're well-spoken, but as a playwright I've spent many years hanging around actors, who are incredibly articulate, yet as a class are as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Furthermore, it's clear from his speeches that far from being the "historian" president, Mr Obama's grasp of history is nil and he is probably the least well-read president of anyone I can think of.

This is the clincher, he is staggeringly inexperienced and his basic competence is a giant cipher. I find it literally impossible to tell which of his policies are borne out of due consideration, ideology, desperate flailing about, or terror of altering something he has no understanding of.

Oddly, it's the last point that gives me hope. If there is one thing that has saved the Free World from raving do-gooders like The One is that they usually turn out to be complete showers at the job and therefore don't do much damage. We can only hope that that's the case here, but in the meantime, God help us all because the prospects could get pretty scary before the clock runs out.

Popular Mechanics has an interesting article on how to survive attacks from a mountain lion, alligator, and black bear. Their suggestions are all very good, but they do lack an obvious alternative that we here at EI now provide as a public service.

Surviving an attack by:

A mountain lion: Unsling the hunting rifle you should have been carrying in the first place, chamber a round, point it at the mountain lion's head, and blow his brains out.

An alligator: Unsling the hunting rifle you should have been carrying in the first place, chamber a round, point it at the alligator's head, and blow his brains out.

A black Bear: Unsling the hunting rifle you should have been carrying in the first place, chamber a round, point it at the bear's head, and blow his brains out.

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Industrial designer John Cornock introduces the "anti-stab" knife to Britain to combat the threat of criminals getting a bit stabby. It's a bit like dealing with riots by paving the roads with Nerf cobbles.

If you look up "Holding the wrong end of the stick," this is the illustration.

Monday, 15 June 2009

The table... of the FUTURE! Complete with mini-frdge, mini-drawers, mini coffee-maker, mini-microwave, mini-dishwasher, and mini-toaster for making mini meals. And, apparently, you can't remove the chairs because that would be too bourgeois.

But, for some bizarre reason, it connects to the Internet, so that's all right then.

Thursday, 11 June 2009

Brian Deese, the 31-year old Yale Law School drop out whose car industry experience consists of once sleeping in a GM car park and has been charged with the task of, according to the New York Times, "dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism," has been declared the Dolphin Dauphin of Detroit.

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

I'm used to the press fawning over Mr Barack Hussein Obama in terms that make the coverage of "Camelot" look like a newspaper lynching, but this piece by Matt Frei of the BBC makes me wonder if Mr Obama shouldn't file for a restraining order. Nor is it an anomaly–not when the AP declares that the problem with the Iranians is that they haven't been exposed to The One enough to love him properly or when the media is so agog over Hope and Change that they don't even bother to deal with basic logic and arithmetic.

Some commentators, even in the MSM, have begun to notice this and are wondering if the press isn't slacking at its job. Of course, that depends on what their job is.

What I find most interesting about this is not what is happening now, but what may come in a few months or years if the MSM doesn't stop acting like the official record of Barchelle's dates. I sincerely doubt that Mr Obama can keep voting "present" and blaming everything on his predecessor or how wicked America was before he came along while making uplifting yet empty speeches and spending money like it's the wastepaper that it will soon become. It can't last forever. The facade has to break wide open in a way that even the Matt Freis of the world can't ignore.

Then we'll see news coverage go one of two ways: First, The One will cross the Fourth Estate, as he's crossed so many of his other erstwhile supporters, by failing to bail out the New York Times or not sending Rush Limbaugh to Gitmo and we'll learn again that the MSM isn't the lapdog of Obama, but an ally who is quite capable of turning on him when their own agenda is thwarted. The other is that sooner or later the economic mess will be his alone, Iran will go nuclear and Israel will react, or the Jihadis will make a major strike against an American target. Then the MSM will continue to carry the can for The One no matter how bad things get and we'll have an American version of what's unfolding in Britain today where Mr Gordon Brown does his replay of Hitler in the bunker while the BBC carries on a bizarre attempt to convince the world that Brown is a paragon among men, New Labour will survive to win the next election, and Andrew Marr gets a pony.

I'd prefer something along the lines of: "Good day, sir. Do you have your passport, visa, ship's registration and manifest? Right. Have you read this, sir? Do you have any wine, spirits, uncooked meats, growing plants? How many cigarettes? How much cash..."